Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou
I wouldn't get too excited about those figures either. They're just forecasts and are often wrong.
Indeed forecasts are just ... well ... forecasts. They certainly reflect a certain sentiment and of course (almost) everybody likes forecasts as they create the illusion that you can develop solid plans for the future - but in the end GDP and similar forecasts are (at least in my experience) not much more reliable than weather forecasts that might be reasonably reliable for the next day but then quickly seems to deteriorate into guessing and/or extrapolation (at least they seem to have the same accuracy as guessing )